My Favourite Things About Halloween: A Mega Collaboration

There are a few things I love about Halloween! I love seeing my kids get excited about the costumes and trick or treating. They talk about it for weeks ahead of time! I also love the excuse to allow myself to feel lighthearted. That’s not always easy when you have depression. The thing I love most? Any holiday that involves creating traditions with the kiddos/husband! We love trick or treating then snuggling up with a good Halloween related movie.

(Jen | Twitter: @JVan3610 | www.diffusingthetension.com)

Em’s Mixed Bag

Hello, I’m Em, and I write a little lifestyle blog pretty much about everything and anything! I’m proud 31 year old making her way through life by travelling the world, eating my way through as much delicious food as possible and drinking a lot of prosecco while trying to plan my wedding, pretty normal right?! 

What’s my favourite part of Halloween? The dressing up has to be up there! Any excuse to dress ridiculously, or even sexier than would normally be acceptable then I am all over it! My usual go-to outfits are cats, devils, or my proud moment of actually being able to reenact Zip Face that I had found on Instagram (you really don’t know how hard it is to find a suitable zip for your face unless you’ve attempted it). Not only that, I actually love the transition from Autumn to Winter and I think Halloween is a sign of this, closely followed by my absolute favourite night of the year – Bonfire Night!

I would love to connect with new people so please do come and say ‘Heyyyy’ on Instagram or Twitter 🙂

From a young age, I have loved dressing up and being something/someone else for the day. Trick or treating was my favourite thing to do. Seeing everyone enjoy being in costume made me super happy. Now that i’m older and I have developed a love for makeup, I love creating new things and with Halloween, i can be as creative and gory as I want to be. It’s all about expressing yourself and I think that is one of the best things.

I remember my parents used to go all out for kids on Halloween. A couple of days before the day we would go shopping and buy many bags of sweets and sandwich bags. We would make little pick-n-mix kind of bags so everyone gets something different and not just one thing. It was so sweet and I know why they did it now. They just didn’t want to give a kid one sweet they may not like, they got a little bag of treats. Being a fat kid, I always loved when we didn’t get many trick-or-treaters because I could have some!

I love seeing all the different looks on Halloween and things that people create because everyone is so talented! It’s a time for pumpkins, ghouls and now, an excuse to have a party!

I run Something Different, a lifestyle and beauty blog in the Midlands of the UK! I also dabble in bullet journalling and wellbeing! https://somethingdifferent1998.com/

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One of my favourite things about Halloween is a good Halloween party. October 31st is coming up and it’s the perfect time to have a Halloween party if you’re too old to go trick or treating and don’t enjoy the fuss of dressing up in costumes. 

3 Halloween party ideas that guarantee a spooktacular time:
#1  Theme

This goes without saying that your theme needs to be scary and spooky in keeping with the Halloween spirit however, ensure that there is consistency from doorstep to dancefloor. 

Theme ideas:

• Scary movie night – You could keep it simple, budget friendly and intimate and host a movie night for your close friends.

• Masquerade party – Taking it up a notch you could plan a themed masquerade party for your guests with fun Halloween games such as a scary treasure hunt, a murder mystery or ‘magic potion drinks’ you can serve. 

• The witching hour – Happy hour but with a Halloween twist. 

#2 Spooky entrance

You could also have a scary skeleton, some spooky sound effects or a prerecorded track in your hallway or corridor. You can also add some fake mirrors [you can get these on Amazon] or DIY by taking old mirrors and creating a haunted mirror [check out YouTube tutorials]. 
#3 The scare is in the punch 

Have an assortment of snacks and drinks with a Halloween twist. Following the magic potion drinks, you could even have little labels on drinks such as ‘love potion’, ‘sleeping potion’ and ‘dance potion’ that could be exciting. Another easy way to add some mystery and excitement to the party is to have dry ice in punch bowls or a carved pumpkin to give off a truly spooky Halloween vibe. 

By Shanon D’Souza from Wanderingstylishly.wordpress.com [Lifestyle blogger who blogs about fashion, my travels and things that generally catch my eye. I am fairly new to the blogging world so I will be curating new content in the next few months].

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I’ve always been drawn to scary things: stories about ghosts and monsters, monster-themed toys and games, horror comedies, and slasher movies. And while I grew up loving Christmas like most kids, Halloween has long surpassed Christmas as my favorite holiday. It provides its promised excitement without that burden of obligations required to “do it right.” 

Halloween takes over my October in a welcoming, distracting way rather than a stressful and depressing one. That endorphin rush of feeling scared without any actual threat is like a roller coaster ride that brings excitement to your mundane day-to-day life.

Halloween was traditionally celebrated as the end of summer and the completion of the harvest season, and it still feels that way. Fall is now in full swing here in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. The leaves are changing, it’s getting dark earlier, and the days are colder.

Cook outs and barbecued dinners are replaced with soups and meats that roast for hours in the oven or simmer on the stovetop. Fruit bowls are filled with apples and pears instead of melons and berries. The color palette is full of bold colors: dark reds, deep oranges, and golden yellows giving way to pink and purple sunsets followed by pitch black windy nights. 

Going out on Halloween is like one last outdoor party before we all hibernate for the winter. As a kid, it was so much fun to put on a costume, collect candy, and walk the streets with your friends and family, catching up with the neighbors you haven’t seen since last Halloween and running to the houses that you knew gave out the best stuff. It was about making Halloween pictures and marching in the Halloween parade at school. It was about spending the month of November pigging out on candy, chips, and Little Hugs. 

I love watching the neighborhood come alive as we decorate our homes with orange, green, and purple lights and set out ghosts, witches, and monsters in the yards. Costumed kids roam the streets in packs collecting candy while adults get ready for parties or watch horror movies in their dark living rooms. 

October 31st always feels like Halloween because if you love it, you will feel it. Whether it’s warm and clear, dark and stormy, or cold and snowy, it fits. The excitement has been building all month. There is a lot to do without the obligation of having to do it all.  From trips to the farm to haunted houses to Halloween parties or just a night in making candy apples and watching horror movies, it’s the culmination of atmosphere, excitement, and low-key traditions that makes Halloween my favorite time of the year. 

Laura Smith is an author, blogger, and freelance writer from Pittsburgh, PA. Her blog, Laura’s Books and Blogs, is a multi-niche blog where she posts writing tips, essays, travel posts, guest posts, contests, giveaways, writing tools, calls for submissions, and more. You can find it at https://laurasbooksandblogs.com

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What is my blog about? Well, is all about books and reading; sometimes I write about other topics but is mostly books and bookish. I hope that gives you an idea of what you might find. Now, let’s get to what we all came here for, talk about Halloween thanks to Sophia.

I like Halloween because of the dark themes in almost everything, from books to movies and TV shows you can witness how the themes vary as the dates get closer to Halloween. I love watching the Halloween décor in stores and in pictures since in my country there aren’t much Halloween décor in the streets and/or houses. I like how it feels just right to just pick up a creepy, mysterious, dark, suspense book because the atmosphere is like that. But the thing I love and enjoy the most about this Holliday are the movies and the TV show’s specials. Movies like Hocus Pocus and everything Tim Burton have done makes me feel the atmosphere of the fall, the scares (without being scary), the dark themes and even the appreciation for Halloween. And the Halloween specials of TV shows and series! I mean, the old episodes of DWTS with the group dances and the creepy ambiance… I LOVE THEM! And, maybe the lamest ones, the Halloween episodes of Pretty Little Liars always makes me feel a little creeped out. Anyway, I enjoy this time of the year, and those are the main reasons I do. Hope we share something about our liking of Halloween! And thank, Sophia, for giving me the opportunity to participate here! Take care everyone.

 

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My favorite thing about Halloween is decorating the house! I really enjoy digging out all of the window stickers (and purchasing a bunch of new ones) then letting the family go around and design different windows in the house! Window decorations aren’t something we have up any other time of the year, apart from times when holidays are nearby. We put bunting up in doorways, spiderwebs in others, and start putting skeletons, bats, spiders, etc up on the walls. We add little decorations to tables and surfaces, this year we went with adorable Pokemon sticking out of Jack-o-lanterns that seem to get moved each week, but still look cute wherever they are.  Adding all of the decorations to the house makes it feel new and fresh and seasonal. It’s not as much effort as a big re-design of a room, but instead adds new aspects to each area. I quite like the change the house has to a new look just for the season, before changing to normal and then to Christmas!

As a child, one of our summer traditions was to visit our local ‘pick your own’ farm for a ride on the tractor and to pick huge punnets of plump juicy strawberries. It’s a summertime tradition I’ve kept up with my own 4 children.

So when a pumpkin patch opened up locally this weekend, of course we couldn’t wait to give it a go!

My eldest two children would rather spend their Sunday mornings in bed than traipsing through muddy fields with their Mum and their slightly loud sisters, but the youngest two couldn’t wait to welly-up and go and pick their pumpkins ready for Halloween.

We always have a pumpkin each to carve, which go on our doorstep with candles inside on Halloween night -the unspoken rule around here for  houses that are happy to receive trick or treaters.

We were expecting to find a field full of the usual orange pumpkins that appear in supermarkets at this time of year, but we were blown away by how many different varieties there were.

I set the girls a challenge to see who could find 5 different and unusual pumpkins. The girls grabbed  a wheelbarrow each and off they went, charging around the field searching high and low for their pumpkins. They didn’t disappoint!

Our pumpkin family are now sat on our fireplace patiently waiting for Halloween when they will be lovingly carved, and their insides turned into our traditional Halloween dinner – pumpkin soup, followed by spiced pumpkin cake (like carrot cake, but so much nicer).

Predictably, both teenagers wished they had come after all, so maybe next year I’ll have all 4 of them pushing wheelbarrows through the mud, laughing, slipping and sliding all over the place and making wonderful memories. And maybe next year I’ll get Joe to push his sisters through the mud, because I’ve woken up today with the worst back ache. But let’s face it, no outing would be a Fox family outing without making me say FFS at some point!

A little about me: I’m Hannah, single  parent to Joe (18) Jess (17) Emily (10) and Ruby (8) who I lovingly refer to as my collection of sleep thieves. I often have what I think are  great ideas which usually become disasters and have me shouting FFS!. My blog is essentially a collection of parenting mishaps that I hope will make you laugh, and make you feel like you’re not alone whilst travelling through the scariest hood in the world.. parenthood.

Halloween is a time of joy, that creepy crawly feel of excitement in your gut that only comes with the prospect of too much sugar and shop aisles full of discounted kitsch. When I was a kid – back in the time of the dinosaurs if you ask my own – Halloween wasn’t really a big deal here, not when we were so hung up on burning human effigies on a bonfire a few days later. I mean, sure, you had a cheap plastic mask to wear, and a few neighbours’ doors to knock on, but as a mini horror fanatic I would sit watching cheesy US Halloween specials with ill disguised envy. When I grew up, I vowed, my house too would look like a shrine to the creepy and the kooky.

I collected plastic skulls and rubber bats. Groaning ghouls and shrieking spectres. I practiced elaborate gore themed canapes, and put together movie playlists, and longed for the day when I had a minion of my own to really test it all out on. Then Marianna came along and hated everything related to the big day (night). No ghosts, no witches, no full size skeletons emerging from the ground in the front garden… Maybe it will change in the years to come but, for now, we’ve reached a compromise. I still get to have all the decorations: they just have to be in miniature!

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My name is Lottie, a 17 year old blogger from the UK who runs effloresia.com. I post about witchcraft, mental health, and pretty much anything that interests me!

Halloween or Samhain is a brilliant time for change as it marks the transition from the light half of the year into the dark half of the year. This is the time of the year for getting rid of weakness, and is extremely empowering. For me, it is a time for big changes, and isn’t dissimilar to the concept of new years resolutions.

Besides the symbolism of Samhain, I really enjoy experimenting with makeup and wearing nightmare before Christmas themed socks that may not be socially acceptable at other times of the year.

I also really enjoy any excuse to dive deep into conspiracy theories and absolutely scare myself, so I appreciate all the spooky videos that suddenly become available on Youtube around this time of year. 🙂

Lottie (Effloresia.com)

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